Of Promises Never Broken
by fitzsimmons-with-prosciutto
Summary: They started and they ended. But in between, they collapsed around each other. A sherlolly fic of why they could never be. 4/5 chapters. Would make me very happy if you guys could read&review :D
1. Chapter 1

**She had sad dew drops floating down her cheeks and he had angry-stained knuckles aching to destroy cities and hopes and loves.**

 **She had fire in her hands and it was melting the ice in his heart, leaking through his eyelashes.**

 **He had walls surrounding himself and she was never a good climber.**

They start with indelicate rush, with shattered glass on the lab floor and hushed moans behind closed doors, with notes forgotten on coats and midnight encounters far from anyone's view.

It continues with lingering stares and secrets that weigh too much on her shoulders, the ones he kisses so carelessly.

They are no fairytale lovers and his maddening need for solitude is like a curse in a language long gone: she doesn't even understand what's harming her so much.

Her insufferable good heart makes him so angry to the point of no return.

He's breaking the golden girl into tiny pieces and selling her broken parts below market rate.

He's destroying the most beautiful thing he ever had.

And her gaze pierced through his brain straight into a land called "self-condemnation", where the desire to kiss her matched the need to apologize for this, for all of this.

He was so sorry he couldn't be what she deserved.

They start with John asking "where are we going?" and his inexplicable impulse to say 'home' as his steps lead them to Saint Bartholomew's hospital.

-/-

 **He had abjured from all this a long time ago, lacing promises and oaths with the dynamite that destroyed his universe.**

 **He had written a contract with blood and it was unbreakable.**

 **He was chained to his past and he couldn't drown her warm eyes and her kind smile and her easy laugh and her auburn hair and her steady hands and her sweet voice with the anchors in his mind.**

 **His heart was a scorched earth and he wouldn't let her kisses heal him.**

 **He would kill all the roses.**

Mycroft had a tiny scar under his right elbow.

Sherlock had one on his left ankle.

The third Holmes' brother had a memorial near a cliff.

(It started with his "come on come on, let's go faster!" and it ended with the agonizing scream of a 16 year old boy.)

(Mycroft never drove again.)

(Sherlock never raced again.)

(The other one's heart never beat again.)

("SHERLOCK HELP US!")

(And he picked the ginger boy instead of the brunette.)

(And of the three, the one who died was the only one who forgave him.)

He had a one-way ticket to a burdened conscience and he was not gonna take anyone with him.

He would kill no one with his selfish love ever again.

-/-


	2. Chapter 2

**He was absconding her questions, hiding in the dark corners of his mind until she was gone, petting his little monsters good night.**

 **He had secrets that weren't meant to be known and she was scavenging too close for comfort, too close from L-O-V-E to be ignored, her silly calculations that added to hands brushing his face and legs gripping his waist tight, so tight, don't let me fall.**

 **He was running towards her too fast and her frail arms wouldn't stop his plummeting to the ground.**

 **Curiously enough, he was the one that fell, and she was the one that loved.**

When he asks her, he knows what he is doing. He's using all the good (all the love) in her heart until she's all used up and the next one (the hypothetical person he already despises) won't have anything to hold on to. He's a thief, stealing all the smiles out of her, never giving them back.

He needs her silly joy more than anything.

(He needs her pretty eyes to be shining like this all the time.)

When he asks her for help, the only one that could help (the only one he wanted help from), he sees it shatter inside her.

He broke her heart, right now, this instant, and she will never tell him (but he knows).

Still, she helps, because there is no other option, there's no denying him anything, he can take whatever he wants, he can take her whole (but he doesn't want to and it makes her hands quiver to think that). She gives him all she can.

And he greedily asks for more, a smile playing on the side of his lips.

He kisses her in return, but that's not enough, that will never make up for what he's doing.

When he jumps from the roof, her heart breaks his fall.

He leaves it on the sidewalk.

He vanishes for one year and she's still picking pieces of herself from all over London.

(But he took something from her that she's never going to get back.)

-/-

 **The fugacious deceitfulness of happiness was mesmerizing his senses. He didn't deserve it and he knew it, he knew it was an inaccuracy that the universe would fix sooner or later.**

 **And, as he gripped hands that searched for his, laughter permeating his surroundings and dream-filled words were whispered to his chest, he begged for later, he begged for more seconds of blissful ignorance and sacred innocence.**

He stays in her house for 3 days, days in which the outside world didn't exist.

It was all he ever dreamed of.

He presses kisses to her neck and he loves the purr-like noises she makes.

He's destroying her heart in the most beautiful way he can.

She had dreams he'd never be able to fulfill, wishes he didn't share, goals he didn't care to achieve.

But the way her eyelashes bat and the way her eyebrows arch and that stupid quirk of her lips make him stay for longer than what is safe, and when he leaves he wishes he could stay and that thought scares him so deeply that he never goes back there again.

And she is alone in a flat that had witnessed things she didn't want to remember.

He was supposed to be dead and for a second, a half-of-a-second, she wishes he really was.

Dead men don't come back.

-/-

"I've kept an eye on her…" his brother says, and he blocks all the thoughts that want to surface.

He can't think of her now.

"Don't." he says, and he's not sure his brother understands what he means. Her legs are not around his waist and her lips are not marking his neck. He can't. Not now.

"I thought you'd be pleased." Mycroft looks at him in such a curious way, like he is a little mouse in an experiment, and Sherlock can't think of any of that now, nothing that is not imperative for his mission.

And he doesn't ask Mycroft anything because he doesn't want to know, he doesn't care.

(But that sad little melody in the back of his mind is chanting her name.)

(Before he leaves his brother's office, he notices a picture frame.)

(It's made of silver and it's old, by the looks of it.)

(A dead boy smiles at him from the middle of two caring brothers.)

(He had forgot how Mycroft's smile looked like.)

(Fifteen years ago, his eyes didn't have 'guilty' written in them.)

(And there's no melody anymore.)

-/-

A few miles from there, Molly meets a man called Tom.

His smile makes her feel warm inside, like the winter that had set upon her was finally coming to an end.

She smiles back.


	3. Chapter 3

**She didn't like his faulty fealty, she didn't like the almost alliteration of it and she didn't like his heart's constant hunger for whatever it is it wanted. She didn't like his ups and downs and she didn't like to admit that they were oxymorons orbiting each other.**

 **He wanted her so close but needed her far.**

 **He loved her so much but with a scarred twisted beat of drums.**

 **He was made of kerosene and she was running through his halls threatening to lit up the fire-crackers.**

 **She wanted love but flirted with disaster.**

 **He was a train-wreck entwining hearts on his fingers.**

And now it's one year after he waltzed out of her life with all that made her who she was hidden in the flaps of his coat.

And Tom kisses her in all the right places with the wrong pair of lips.

-/-

When he shows up, her mind shuts down.

He can't be here, not now, _not now_ that she will get married (not now that she is someone else's).

When she sees the bruise on his cheek, she thanks John for doing what she could never (because only John could ever hurt him).

He smiles so childishly and something inside her breaks.

"Hi Molly." and his voice makes her name sound so loveable.

(And he knows exactly what he's doing, but he can't stop)

(He can't let her walk away untainted)

-/-

He asks for her help one day, when John didn't answer him.

(Of course she was the second option, of bloody course)

(But she follows him around town happily, enjoying her small crumbles of attention, praying her moments under the sun could never end)

And it's then that he notices the ring.

(And that feeling on the pit of her stomach is no match for what his eyes are trying to say to her)

"I'm happy for you." and he is, because if that makes her happy, it's okay, it's all okay, she deserves better, he always knew she deserved better.

But for two years he had prayed he could be better.

And in the end, he isn't.

And he wants to hold her and kiss her and beg for her to be his again, beg for her to hold him like she used to, beg her to take him back, beg for forgiveness, beg for anything that she wants that would make her run her hands through his back the way she usd to.

But he smiles and doesn't blink.

"I'm _happy_ for you."

He can't remember when was the last time he cried.

-/-

(Seventeen years ago, Mycroft was standing in the middle of his room, late at night. It took him a few moments to realize he was crying)

("You're guilty Sherlock, you know it. You are the one that should be dead, not him. _Not him._ ")

("I'm sorry.")

("That won't bring him back.")

(And they stayed like that for what felt like decades)

("You always hurt the ones that don't deserve it.")

(And after Mycroft left, he cried too)

 **-/-**

 **So here i am again. I thought that even if you guys didn't like it much, i might as well end it... Thank you for reading, and if you guys could r &r it'd mean the world to me :)**


	4. Chapter 4

**When she says it, he wants to hurt her.**

 **He wants to snarl words her way that will make her doe eyes watery and he wants to shake some sense into her and he wants to kiss her and he wants to dash to the door and he hates her in that second, and in the next one he still hates her and he hates her for minutes on end until her hands cup his face and she leaves with a hint of lilies on the air around her.**

 **He hates it all and he destroys all that he can touch.**

 **Maybe if he destroys everything here, she will understand.**

 **Maybe then she will see that he is an unstable box of fireworks ready to dismantle her in the most obnoxiously irreversible way.**

 **Maybe if he destroys everything within his reach, he can barricade her from him.**

 **Maybe he can protect her then.**

He steps on the shrapnels of his heart for days after that.

She never mentions it.

(But she gave him a chance that he never took)

(The syllables she said are burned into his very being)

("I... I love you, Sherlock. And oh dear God, so much. But I know you can't love me anymore. It's okay. I'll be okay.")

(But will he be okay?)

-/-

The invitation she couldn't hand herself arrives through the post 8 days later.

It's beige and he can tell where, when and how it was made just by looking at it.

He can't tell why, though.

(Wasn't she supposed to marry him?)

(And he hates that generic looking man so much)

(Almost as much as he hates himself)

-/-

He thinks about Ukraine more than what he would like.

He thinks about torture and running through the woods in the middle of the night.

He thinks of hunger, white hot hunger that he can't curb.

(He thinks about the parabola of her lips and the angle of her knees and the purity of her laugh and the warmth of her hugs and the tingling of her hair on his face and the perfection of her breathing and that's what makes his legs keep working)

(He's feeding out of her)

(But she's running away faster than he can keep up)

(She's leaving him alone in the woods)

-/-

\- Oi mate, let's get a move on!- John calls him from the living room.

(He's just now realized she forgot one of her jumpers on his flat)

(He won't give it back)

\- I'm coming.- he answers, loud enough so John can stop pacing on his hardwood floor.

(She's gonna wear white today, he knows that much)

(She's gonna make an oath to someone else)

(She's gonna kill off their obscure little happiness)

(She's gonna make it look like it never existed)

(She's crushing his heart with her veil and bouquet and the goddamned wedding dress)

(But he crushed her heart eight months ago when she begged him to say something)

(And " _we will never be, Molly. Goodbye"_ )

(And he broke everything after she left)

\- Who would've thought our Molly would get married, huh?- John said, chuckling.

(It wasn't his Molly anymore)

He chuckles too, feeling something he can't quite name.

\- I surely didn't.- he answers and John smiles as he walks out the door.

(Not like this, at least)

 **-/-**

 **He's got strings pulling him to places he doesn't want to go.**

 **He's got a heart singing a song he doesn't want to learn.**

 **She's got white hands stained with blood that is not hers.**

 **She's hoarding hearts she doesn't know how to treat right.**

Maybe it's the way she looks like she's floating or maybe it's the shy smile she gives that despicable man or maybe it's the adorable way her hair is tied, but he can't stay in that church for a minute longer.

He leaves before she sees him and he's running through London as she's saying her vows, trying to get as far away of it as he can.

He turns left when she promises she will be Tom's, that he can have her and hold her.

He gets out the door when she pledges for better or for worse.

He crosses the street when she assures him that they will be one, for richer or for poorer.

He is almost run over when she swears in sickness and in health.

He falls to his knees when she oaths to love and cherish, he realizes he may be crying when she bonds them till death does them part.

This time, his is the heart forgotten on the sidewalk.

This time, there's no coming back.

-/-

(Inside the protestant church that she picked, Molly's eyes dart from one guest to another as she walks down the aisle)

(She can't see the one she's looking for)

(She smiles to her soon-to-be-husband and she repeats all that she's suppose to)

(No one says anything, but she's not surprised by that)

(He didn't say anything when she asked him directly either)

(He didn't even show up this time)

-/-

The last promise he made was to his brother.

(" _I'm gonna keep you save_ ")

(He should've bloody known)

-/-

Mycroft finds him sitting on his office when he gets back from lunch.

\- Sherlock. I must say I entertained the possibility of you being here, brother, but I didn't think you'd come to this extent of pat-

\- Not today, Mycroft.- he said hoarsely.

\- No, I guessed that much. Is it over?- Mycroft said, sitting on the chair across the room.

Sherlock glanced at the clock.

\- I reckon so.

Mycroft nodded briefly.

\- If I say I feel for you, you wouldn't believe me, would you?

\- Not for a split second.- he answered humourously.

The two brothers stayed in silence.

\- He would know what to say.- Sherlock stated simply.

\- He always knew.- Mycroft agreed.- We may be clever, brother dear, but he was the best of us.

\- Why do you think that is?- Sherlock asked, genuinely curious.

\- He was the only one of us who had a heart.

The clock counts the seconds that slip through them, tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock, all the sentences they will never tell each other.

\- Do you think he f-

\- I know he did, Sherlock.

\- How?

(And this question is so important that Sherlock's eyes can't face his brother)

(This is what his anchors are made of)

\- He had the heart we don't.- Mycroft said, looking at him like he hadn't for a long time.

(But the shackles in his mind are whispering a different poetry)

(The way his brother looks at him reminds him of Sunday mornings of a long time ago)

When he stands up to leave, Mycroft's hand holds his elbow.

He looks at it, before shoving it away.

\- I'm sorry, Sherlock.

(Mycroft was right, as always)

(He didn't believe it for a split second)

-/-


End file.
